During the summer before I turned fourteen, my family took a vacation to visit my mother’s parents in Canada. Family crawled out the woodwork up there. There was a grandmother AND a grandfather, aunts and uncles and cousins galore! Back home in New York, there was my grandmother, my aunt [my father’s mother and his sister] and her husband — that was all. There were no other aunts and uncles, no great aunts and uncles and definitely no cousins. I wanted to know why. What happened to everyone? And that wanting to know is what started my obsession with genealogy.

Erin, Kevan and Shawn Williamson [l to r] In front of Grandpa and Grandma Duthie's house New Brunswick, Canada 1972

Erin, Kevan and Shawn Williamson [l to r]
In front of Grandpa and Grandma Duthie’s house
New Brunswick, Canada 1972

My interest in resuming my research was rekindled during the summer of 2013. I was teaching a quilting technique on an Alaskan cruise. Several women who were quilters but not taking our classes dropped in to visit. During a later conversation with one of these quilters, she shared that she was on the cruise for a genealogy conference. She thought what I was doing was so intriguing and I thought the same about her. I decided that when I returned home, I was going to look into updating my genealogy software and re-entering all of my previous research.

Naturally, I took advantage of the free trial period that came with my Family Tree Maker software. With all the information available online now, it didn’t take me long to become obsessed again — running down this trail and that after falling into one rabbit hole after another. So here I am trying to take advantage of new technology and resources while inputting data gained during my research from 1993-2003 and adding new ancestors and family members to my tree.

My old family history files are a mess. (There. I said it.) My blog is about my attempt to clean them up and document my findings properly and maybe share a few stories and helpful hints along the way.

===

Translate

Subscribe via Email

Subscribe to my blog and receive new posts by email.

A bit about me


Erin Williamson Klein
New York to Nevada
Started my research in 1993

Following the GPS!

Sourced Database Statistics:

2 of 2 people identified as parents
4 of 4 people identified as grandparents
8 of 8 people identified as great-grandparents
16 of 16 people identified as 2x great-parents
30 of 32 people identified as 3x great-grandparents
44 of 64 people identified as 4x great-grandparents
52 of 128 people identified as 5x great-grandparents
32 of 256 people identified as 6x great-grandparents
14 of 512 people identified as 7x great-grandparents
8 of 1024 people identified as 8x great-grandparents

Participating In:

WikiTree worldwide family tree
+ more ... join me @ WikiTree


Camp 2020 Writer logo
November 2020 NanoWriMo
50,404 of 50,000 words written about my ancestors.